App Drove Biker to Greater Speed, But Didn’t Cause His Death

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Near the top of Olde Stage Road near my home of Boulder, Colorado, there’s a pair of handpainted signs that read “Lickety-Split” and “Lovely Deer.” Olde Stage is a favorite hillclimb among local cyclists; linked to Lee Hill Road via Lefthand Canyon, it makes up one of the area’s best short, hard rides.

Joe Lindsey

But it’s not without danger, as the signs suggest. Once you reach the top of the hill, you’ve got to come down. Among the hazards: some sharp corners; weather; gravel and debris; the many commuters — possessed of a wide range of driving ability and cordiality to cyclists — who drive from their foothills homes to Boulder for work or errands; and, of course, the aforementioned deer.

The signs, which have been there for as long as I can remember, are a lament. Maybe we could slow down a little, it asks. But in cars or on bikes, we don’t.

All of this was in my mind last Thursday on that ride, thinking about the news earlier that week that the grieving family of a cyclist sued a social fitness website, Strava, after he died on a descent.

Strava is like many social fitness sites — Garmin Connect, Nike+, and so on — in that you can record workout data from a GPS device or phone app and upload the file to track it, analyze it, and share it with friends or publicly. It shows where you ran or rode, how long and how fast, for the three most obvious metrics. But Strava takes it a step further, comparing your times not just against your own personal best, but the fastest times from anyone on a section of road or trail.

The fastest are called KoMs, or King of the Mountain, after the classification of the same name in the Tour de France, which goes to the race’s best climber. Rankings are updated constantly, like high scores in a videogame. A further twist, which is at the heart of the lawsuit over the death of William “Kim” Flint: Strava doesn’t merely recognize the fastest ascents, but the fastest descents as well.

At 5:22 p.m. on June 19, 2010, Flint, 41, was riding down South Park Drive in Tilden Park, in the Berkeley hills, when he braked to avoid a car and flipped, sustaining fatal injuries. Last week, the family’s lawyer, Susan Kang, filed a negligence lawsuit against Strava arguing that the company bears responsibility for Flint’s death.

A previous record-holder for the descent on South Park Drive, Flint had learned not long before his fatal ride that another cyclist had recorded a faster time. Flint was out to get his bragging rights back.

Strava didn’t invent competitive urges; it merely came up with an innovative way to recognize our human imperative to improve, to win — a common trait among cyclists.

“Is it 100 percent Strava’s fault? No, of course not,” Kang told ABC. “Do they have a responsibility to the public to encourage safety and take down the more dangerous routes from their website? We think so.”
Flint’s death was an undeniable tragedy and his family should be treated with compassion and sympathy; his widow’s blog is a heart-wrenching read. But the case galls me for several reasons. Cyclists have many legitimate legal safety concerns. In Bicycling’s award-winning “Broken” feature, David Darlington illustrates how the legal system often fails completely to bring justice to cyclists hit by motorists who are clearly at fault.

The Flint lawsuit paints an ironic contrast to “Broken”: at the same time we’re trying as a community to get the legal system to make others accountable for their actions, we’re trying to shift responsibility for our own.

And, her comments to ABC and elsewhere suggest Kang thinks that Strava is a promoter of some kind. Race and event organizers always have participants sign waivers, but it is established law that this doesn’t indemnify them against lawsuits for negligence over things like unsafe courses. But little of that fits the Flint case.

Strava doesn’t actually create the segments, as they’re called; users do. Strava does notify riders when their top time is bested. It doesn’t actively police segments, either; there’s an established method to report an unsafe segment or a fraudulent one. (Up until the lawsuit, Strava’s biggest user issue had been “Strava doping” or cheating your way to a KoM by drafting a car or simply taking your Garmin for a drive with a very steady foot on the accelerator.)

Strava’s own rules of use explicitly do not sanction illegal behavior, like speeding or center-line violations. But it’s also pretty clear from even a casual perusal of Strava segments that speeding, at least, is common.

Another San Francisco fatality linked to Strava is that of Sutchi Hui, a pedestrian struck and killed in the Castro by cyclist Chris Bucchere. Bucchere is charged with felony vehicular manslaughter and, prosecuters say, was speeding and tracking his time for a Strava segment.

More prosaically, purists grumble that in the good ol’ days, social fitness meant a group ride, and that if you want to measure yourself against other riders, enter a race.

And that all might be totally true. But does it mean Strava is somehow liable for Kim Flint’s death?

No.

Aside from the above points that show how Strava legally dissociates itself from its users’ unsafe behavior, let’s grant that people are perfectly capable of that on their own.

Strava didn’t invent competitive urges; it merely came up with an innovative way to recognize our human imperative to improve, to win — a common trait among cyclists. As part of my job for Bicycling, I attend product introductions, often getting a chance to ride new bikes in cool places. Among my fellow tech writers is a principle known as the 80 percent rule.

Loosely: When on an unfamiliar bike in unfamiliar terrain, dial it back to 80 percent of your abilities. Someone always gets caught up in ego and forgets that; it’s a rare press launch where someone doesn’t crash or go home injured. The 80 percent rule predates Strava by at least a decade.

Henry Ford is said to have remarked that auto racing was born five minutes after the second car was built. Our competitive urges are not new, and technology didn’t create them. I’ve been riding and racing for more than 20 years and I should be far past this, but still, some part of my reptilian brain releases a surge of dopamine when I pass another cyclist, especially in a race. I’m not alone: lickety-split. Lovely deer.

But past that, I ride alone fairly often, and even without a rabbit to chase, I push myself in totally irrational ways. I love the hot, sweet tightness in my chest as I stand up out of the saddle on a climb, trying to gain back one more gear, go one mile an hour faster. And there is no sensation on earth like the focus of flying into a switchback at 40mph, or drifting a sweeping turn on singletrack, tires chattering as they scrabble furiously for purchase. The thin edge of control, not at 80 percent but far closer to 100, is where I am most fully alive. Like Kim Flint, I find my religion there.

Last Thursday, on my ride, I crested Lee Hill and began the twisty descent, on the straighter sections of which I regularly reach 45-50mph (the speed limit is 35). I suddenly braked for a flash of motion off to my right. A deer emerged onto the road as I rode past. A moment later, a few miles an hour faster, a hairs-breadth slower reaction time, and I might have hit it.